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By Jason Koebler
Scientists may have finally solved the puzzle of what makes a person gay, and how it is passed from parents to their children.

A group of scientists suggested Tuesday that homosexuals get that trait from their opposite-sex parents: A lesbian will almost always get the trait from her father, while a gay man will get the trait from his mother.

The hereditary link of homosexuality has long been established, but scientists knew it was not a strictly genetic link, because there are many pairs of identical twins who have differing sexualities. Scientists from the National Institute for Mathematical and Biological Synthesis say homosexuality seems to have an epigenetic, not a genetic link.

Long thought to have some sort of hereditary link, a group of scientists suggested Tuesday that homosexuality is linked to epi-marks — extra layers of information that control how certain genes are expressed. These epi-marks are usually, but not always, "erased" between generations. In homosexuals, these epi-marks aren't erased — they're passed from father-to-daughter or mother-to-son, explains William Rice, an evolutionary biologist at the University of California Santa Barbara and lead author of the study.
Read More>http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/...people-are-gay

The difference between pigs and people is that when they tell you you're cured it isn't a good thing.

Some years ago, the theory was that is was the thickness of the nerve cluster that connects the two halves of the brain. The cluster in men is thicker than in women. In male homosexuals, autopsies supposedly showed the thin cluster more consistent with women. Thus, it was determined that genetics was the base.

Now another theory has come up, and it still has a connection to genetics; at least with respect to epi-marks.

"These epi-marks protect fathers and mothers from excess or underexposure to testosterone — when they carry over to opposite-sex offspring, it can cause the masculinization of females or the feminization of males," Rice says, which can lead to a child becoming gay. Rice notes that these markers are "highly variable" and that only strong epi-marks will result in a homosexual offspring.

I'm not buying this masculinization of females/feminizing of males stuff. I know far too many people of all genders and all sexual orientations who don't fit the stereotypes.

Not saying that there isn't a heritable component to sexual preference and gender identity, just saying that the way this is reported sounds way too schematic to be believable.

Also, the reporter, if not the researchers, thoroughly confuse gender identity (male/female) with sexual preference (choice of gender in a sexual partner). The two are not necessarily paired together. Furthermore, both male/female gender identity and gay/straight preferences are false dichotomies: both are continuums. Both identity and preference can be quite fluid.

Try again.

This, like so many other scientific theories yet to be proved should be moved from the "...finally..." to the "...maybe..." category.

Just sayin'........

Four boxes keep us free: the soap box, the ballot box, the jury box, and the cartridge box.